Quality assurance in student teacher education: Australian and UK perspective

Adapting to change is a common expectation for citizens of the modern societies; particularly those involved in the complex business of education. Populations of the world have experienced the Agricultural Revolution, the Industrial Revolution and now we are changing and adapting to the challenges to our life styles in the Digital Revolution. This new knowledge-based economy or knowledge market has been extremely well documented by the OECD (1996) and the World Bank (1998/1999). Teacher education is key to the development of knowledge-based economies and must respond to the drivers of change. As teacher educators in Higher Education Institutions (HEIs) we must ensure that our graduates are prepared for the world of work by providing them with access to high-quality professional practices and experiences. Quality in education is often defined in terms of its products (Aspin, 2006); in this case the newly-qualified teachers emerging from our programmes. Quality assurance (QA) - a term originating in the production lines of industry - refers to the processes by which we know that our 'products' are emerging with the attributes they need to flourish in the knowledge economy. QA processes must be embedded into all teacher education programmes to develop, maintain and improve the delivery of high-quality and relevant instruction